Mac, I'm sure that some of my writing has effects that would surprise
me, but often it is having affects I DO intend. They just aren't ones
that you want.
kc
Quoting "J. McRee Elrod" <[email protected]>:
Karen,
One of our Canadian clients sent us the URL for one of your articles,
which convinced him that if we harvested ONIX, we could produce MARC
records for him less extensively than we are now doing.
I told him that for a majority of titles we catalogue for him, there
was already a good MARC record at Library and Archives Canada (LAC),
which was free for the taking. In the absence of such a record, the
greatest expense in producing a MARC record is the intellectual work
of assigning class numbers, and controlled access points, neither of
which ONIX accomplishes. (The client is an electronic aggrigator, so
does need class numbers in the plural for his variety of customers:
050, 055 for some Canadian subjects, 060 where relevant, and 082.)
We do harvest ONIX when there is no hit at LAC, and these "protomarc"
records do save some keying time. But they don't put a dent in the
intellectual work, which is the prime cost factor in creating MARC
records.
So I am unenthusiastic about traffic in either direction linked data
and interorperability are promising us.
I do not look forward with pleasure to a bibliographic world in which
keyword searching of captured ONIX data may replace subject headings,
shelving by accession number may replace classification, and we may
lack controlled main and added entries. One major Canadian university
(on the advice of US consultants) has already abolished inhouse
cataloguing, and is depending totally on found data, regardless of
quality. Once a major contributor to the Canadian bibliographic
database, they are now a parasite.
Your writing, Karen, may be having effects you did not intend.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([email protected])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
--
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
